Israel was about to get 'a lot more violent' with Syria after losing an F-16 — and then Putin stepped in

Israeli security forces examine the remains of an F-16 Israeli war plane near the village of Harduf, Israel, on February 10. Reuters

Israel says it destroyed an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace launched from an air base in Syria on Saturday.

Israel retaliated by destroying the drone's command center but lost one of its F-16 jets over Israeli airspace when it was returning from the mission, prompting Israel to strike at Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria.

Ronen Bergman writes in a New York Times op-ed article that Israel had planned further strikes against Iranian and Syrian targets but that Russian President Vladimir Putin prevented an all-out attack by calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly.

A simmering conflict between Israel and Iran in Syria could have erupted into another regional war were it not for the intervention of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to an Israeli investigative journalist.

On Saturday, an Israeli air force helicopter shot down what Israel says was an Iranian drone launched from the Tiyas Military Airbase in central Syria by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Israel responded by sending eight F-16 fighter jets into Syria to destroy the drone's command-and-control center. While flying back to Israel, they came under attack from Syrian anti-aircraft missiles — one of which, an S-200, took down an F-16, forcing the pilots to eject.

A former Israeli army general appeared to confirm Bergman's reporting.

If the F-16 hadn't been shot down, Israel "would be able to keep this issue at a very, very low profile," Udi Dekel, a former Israeli army brigadier general who was the head of the Israel Defense Forces' strategic-planning division, said Wednesday on a call organized by the Israel Policy Forum.

"Because we lost the F-16, we decided to respond against many important targets inside Syria," Dekel said, among them air defenses, Syrian army positions, and Iranian positions around Damascus.

Israel wanted "to send a message that we could not accept any idea that they would try to shoot down our aircraft in our skies," Dekel said.

Dekel said Israel did not pursue further strikes because it wanted to see the Syrian and Iranian response. But he added that there was "intervention by the Russians, who asked us not to escalate the situation anymore and to try and calm down the situation."

These recent actions are likely to increase tensions in the Middle East — but Dekel says he doesn't think this is the "end of the story."

"We killed Iranians operating the UAV and in other locations, so I assume they will try to find any opportunity for revenge against us," he said, referring to the drone with the abbreviation for an unmanned aerial vehicle.